Review: Edmond de Bergerac, Grand Opera House, York, until Saturday

EDMOND is Edmond Rostand, writer of France's most successful play of all time, one that received an hour of rapturous applause after its first performance. That play is Cyrano de Bergerac, the one about the silver-tongued poet and skilled swordsman with the huge hooter and even bigger heart.

Edmond de Bergerac is the story of how struggling playwright Rostand came to write his sudden, unexpected big hit, and what a joyful comedic yarn it is. Alexis Michalik's play took France by storm – much like Cyrano in 1897 – and now Birmingham Rep presents its English-language debut, with the Grand Opera House in York being one of only four locations for the first tour with a cast led by Freddie Fox, Henry Goodman, Josie Lawrence and Chizzy Akydolu.

Lucky York, because this is a fascinating, fun, celebratory play about the world of theatre, but not as insular as the other one in Yorkshire this week evoking that milieu, Tom Stoppard's self-indulgent Rough Crossing, running aground until Saturday at the Leeds Grand. Better instead to make favourable comparisons with John Madden's 1999 film Shakespeare In Love and Alan Ayckbourn's A Chorus Of Disapproval.

Translated tres wittily by Jeremy Sams, and directed by Roxana Silbert with flair, vitality and a keen awareness of humour that will travel well across the Channel but also acquire British characteristics, Edmond de Bergerac is a joy from its fevered start to its sad, sad Cyrano farewell.

On Robert Innes Hopkins' delightful set that transfers almost giddily between theatre, home, bordello and hotel, it opens with brisk, eloquent, waspishly amusing scenes as Freddie Fox's foppish Edmond Rostand suffers his latest flop, one that not even Josie Lawrence's Sarah Bernhardt can save from opprobrium.

Beset with writer's block, his luck finally changes when he helps handsome but dim best friend Leo (Robin Morrissey) woo the beauteous Jeanne (Gina Bramhill) by writing romantic letters to her as if from him. Suddenly he has his muse, his inspiration, his plot, for a new play, Cyrano De Bergerac.

Enter celebrated actor Constant Coquelin (the utterly fabulous Henry Goodman), who is convinced Rostand can write him the hit he needs to pay off a brace of cigar-smoking heavies. Into the story come faded star Maria (Chizzy Akudolu), Coquelin's hopeless actor son , even rival playwright Georges Feydeau.

Michalik and Sams give us love stories that twang the heartstrings, the topsy-turvy making of a play within a play, verbal wit galore and even physical comedy that would delight devotees of The Play That Goes Wrong.

Goodman, Fox, the multi-role-playing Lawrence and Akudolu are all delightful company throughout, and the only wish might be for a shorter second act to match the pulsating rhythm of the first.

Charles Hutchinson